The Write Stuff

At SF Weekly, we take journalism seriously without getting stuffy about it, make sardonic wit and literary style weekly occurrences, and absolutely cherish political independence. We can inveigh against the Total Information Awareness mindset of the Bush administration, and then,...

San Francisco poured millions into the event in hopes of catching crumbs off the table of a megalomaniacal billionaire. New Zealand, meanwhile, directly subsidized its yachting team with government funds, buying something akin to partial ownership of the product. These were calculated risks. Neither may pay off.

We could have called this "The Travel Issue," but mere travel is not what we were after. We wanted to go beyond the two-dimensional, picture-postcard experience of tourism to something deeper — a voyage out in space and back in time. A place where origins and destinations meet.

So many times, we've been told that tragedies or deaths "put things in perspective" when it comes to organized sports. Really? Fans need floods and famines and terrorist attacks and senseless mayhem to remind them that there are more important things in life than the outcome of a ballgame? This is necessary?